Expert calls for review of Ghana's geological map

Accra, Oct. 10, GNA - Ghanaian mountains are about 600 million years, old contrary to the widely held view that they were 2.1 billion years old, a geological research expert, on Friday said in Accra.

New research findings by geologists and others said that meant that Ghanaian mountains, especially those to the east of the country such as the Shai hills, Buem mountains, Akwapim mountains and others, were the youngest of mountains in the world.

Professor Kojopa Attoh, Fullbright Visiting Professor in the Department of Geology, University of Ghana (UG), Legon, therefore, called for a review of the country's geological map to reflect the true picture of the country's geological state. He made the call in the first of a series of three lectures organized by the Geological Survey Department (GSD), which was largely patronised by the academia.

In a highly scientific and technical fashion and with the aid of slides on an overhead screen, Prof. Attoh said 1000 million years ago, today's Africa, South America, Australia and Antarctica, used to be one piece of land called the Gondwana land or Rodenian.

Prof. Attoh said over a period of about 700 million years fragmentations occurred and it resulted in the separate continents we have today, adding that the African bit of the fragments never included what is today's West Africa.

"What is called West Africa today, used to be a wandering piece of rock, which collided with the one of the fragments of the Gondwana land to form Africa," he claimed.

"At the time other mountains existed on the various fragments already."

He said, "it was the collision between that wandering piece of rock and the larger fragment, which led to the formation of the eastern Ghana and Togo mountains, which are erroneously thought to be of the same age with the other existing mountains."

Prof. Attoh also said Eastern Ghana mountains, rocks and hills were therefore, formed in places through the folding of layers of earth on each other, due to the push from below the earth as a result of the collision.

He said it was important that government, economic planners, scientists and the entire nation understood the realities and implications of geological occurrence to know what to expect from where at what time in the history of the country.

Prof. Attoh promised to reveal the socio-economic, natural and scientific implications of the new findings in subsequent lectures.